Locus Focus

Locus Focus host Barbara Bernstein talks with local, regional and national experts, activists and policy makers about climate change, food policy, land use, salmon restoration, forest management and all the other things that matter in our environment.

The extreme drought that California is currently enduring may be a harbinger of climatic conditions to come. Geologic evidence spanning the last 10,000 years indicates that extended droughts and catastrophic floods plagued the West with regularity over the past two millennia. While the West may have temporarily buffered itself from such harsh climatic swings by engineering artificial environments, our modern civilization may be ill-prepared for the future climatic changes predicted to beset the region.

Precious land is being swiped away from poor farmers in the developing world and it's not the work of corrupt dictators or Mother Nature. The culprit is the World Bank. On this episode of Locus Focus, we'll talk with Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, whose new report , Willful Blindness -- How the World Bank's Doing Business (DB) Rankings Impoverish Smallholder Farmers, shows how the powerful entity is behind the rampant theft of land and resources from some of the world's poorest people.

In a few weeks Portland voters will be voting on a measure that would remove Portland's Bureaus of Water and Environmental Services from city control and have them run instead by a new elected board. Proponents claim that this measure will cut Portland water rates and provide transparency in an agency they believe is out of control. But opponents of the measure see it as a power grab by the city's largest industrial water users and corporate polluters, masquerading as a populist revolt. They say that the real intention is to roll back the city's most important environmental initiatives.

Primitive open-fire cooking methods used by people in remote regions of the High Himalayas are responsible for significant deforestation, toxic air pollution, global warming, and millions of premature deaths. One solution to this problem is providing clean-burning stoves to impoverished Himalayan households. Not only do clean-burning efficient cook stoves reduce carbon emissions and help stave off pollution and deforestation, but they also improve the health and living conditions of women and children.

This May voters in Jackson County in Southern Oregon will be voting on the Family Farms Measure 15-119, a ballot measure that would ban genetically engineered crops from being grown in the county. If it passes, Jackson County will join three California Counties (Mendocino, San Cruz and Marin) where GMO bans are already in place. But Jackson County will be the only county in Oregon that can vote on this issue, since the Oregon legislature passed a pre-emptive law last summer prohibiting any other local anti-GMO ordinances.

Coal provides 40 percent of the world's electricity and 39 percent of global CO2 emissions. Mining coal is a deadly profession that destroys the natural environment. Transporting coal is also fraught with dangers and clean coal is a myth. But getting the world off coal is easier said than done. Until we have a comprehensive renewable energy infrastructure, it looks like coal will remain a significant source of the world's energy.

For nearly forty years there has been a ban on crude oil exports from the United States. This ban started in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which sent world oil prices soaring. To shield the United States from the volatility of global oil markets, Congress enacted numerous conservation measures as well as restrictions on oil exports. Forty years later, with fracked American oil flooding the markets, voices from many corners are calling to lift the ban on exporting crude oil.

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When we talk about environmental health hazards, we usually are referring to toxins in the environment outside our bodies. But there are environmental health hazards inside our bodies as well. Chemicals and hormones triggered by stress and trauma can wreak havoc on our nervous systems and ultimately result in serious disease. In her new book Scared Sick, Portland family therapist Robin Karr-Morse, explores how many adult diseases, ranging from fibromyalgia to diabetes, as well numerous psychological disturbances, are rooted in childhood trauma. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Karr-Morse about how the wide array of stresses and trauma hurled at us from birth on, are overtaxing our innate "flight or fight" response and leading to a cascade of health problems that start in early childhood.

Robin Karr-Morse is a family therapist at the Parenting Institute in Portland, Oregon and author of Ghosts from the Nursery and Scared Sick.

Last November the Obama administration responded to intense public opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline—which would carry crude oil from Alberta's tar sands, to refineries on the Gulf Coast—by calling for additional environmental impact studies that could take more than a year to complete. This decision made many pipeline opponents hopeful, if not celebratory. But then six weeks later, as part of a deal to extend the payroll tax cut, congressional Republicans required that the administration make a decision on the project within 60 days.

On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Oil Change International founder Steve Kretzmann about the political maelstrom that is being stirred up by pipeline proponents. We discuss why many environmentalists are optimistic that by requiring a speedy decision, the Republicans' ultimatum actually forces the president to reject the pipeline project, despite this being an election year.

Steve Kretzmann has worked on energy issues and the global oil industry for more than twenty years. He has worked with communities and organizations around the world concerned with the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the oil industry. He has campaigned to keep Florida’s coast free from oil & gas drilling, keep bike lanes open in New York City, engage reluctant corporations in dialogue about human and environmental rights, expose the oil industry’s involvement in drafting Iraq’s new oil law and, end destructive public finance by institutions such as the World Bank. He has also represented various organizations in Washington DC and at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Montreal Protocol. Steve has authored numerous articles and reports and is a regular commentator on issues of corporate accountability, climate change, the global oil industry, and environmental and human rights. He founded Oil Change International in 2005 in order to educate about the true impacts of fossil fuels and to conduct research, education, and organizing to hasten the transition to clean energy.

2011 was the year that fracking became a household word. A little over a year ago opposition to fracking was limited to a select group of environmental activists and people unfortunate to have their water supplies contaminated by neighboring fracking operations. But by the end of the year major media was reporting on independent scientific investigations that linked fracking with water pollution. And federal and state agencies were responding to the growing apprehension about water contamination with more studies and more regulation. What has changed in the last 12 months to ratchet up opposition to this use of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from the deep recesses of shale deposits? On this episode of Locus Focus we are joined by former ProPublica reporting fellow Nicholas Kusnetz, whose articles about controversies surrounding fracking have helped reframe public understanding about the true environmental and health impacts of this practice.

Nicholas Kusnetz is a Middlebury fellow in environmental journalism and a freelance journalist. Until recently he was a reporting fellow at the online investigative journalism website ProPublica.

There is little doubt that Americans are getting fatter. As an example, a new Coast Guard regulation requires that the Washington State Ferries reduce their maximum capacity by 250 passengers because the average body weight of individual passengers has increased by 25 pounds. Common wisdom attributes the rise in obesity to the high caloric/low nutrient levels of the junk food that many people eat and to the auto-centric, pedestrian-hostile physical environments in which they live. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Julie Guthman, author of a new book called Weighing in: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, which challenges many assumptions at the core of the food movement. Rather than blaming the eater for eating too much of the wrong food, Guthman looks for other causes of obesity—like environmental toxins in our food. She critiques the alternative food movement as a phenomenon that is primarily white, elitist, privileged and prejudiced against fat people, and calls for solutions that take on our entire economic system, not just lifestyle choices.

Rivers define Oregon. They shape the landscapes and wildlife habitats as well as human settlements and politics of this very watery place. There are few people who know and can describe Oregon's rivers like Oregon author Robin Cody. On this episode of Locus Focus, Robin joins us to describe his river adventures and reflections, whether he is canoeing the entire length of the Columbia River or floating the Willamette and lower Columbia in his handmade motorized boat, the Turtle. For Robin, the river is a metaphor for our lives, just as our lives are metaphors for the river. Along the way, we'll touch base with his latest collection of essays: Another Way the River Has.

Robin Cody, an Oregon native, is the author of Ricochet River and Voyage of a summer sun, both which appeared on the Oregon State Library's "150 Oregon Books for the Oregon Sesquicentennial. Cody has worked as an English teacher, a dean of college admissions, a baseball umpire and a school bus driver, and lives in Portland. Cody is a native speaker who probes the streams and woods and salmon that run to the heart of what it means to live and love, to work and play, in Oregon.

Transportation accounts for about a third of all carbon dioxide emissions in America. Cars and trucks are the biggest source of our smog pollution, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Gas prices are rising, the dependence on foreign oil is an ongoing concern, and local air pollution is not improving. This makes a powerful case for cleaner cars. Are electric cars the answer?

On this episode of Locus Focus, we talk with Jim Motavalli, author of a new book, HIGH VOLTAGE: The Fast Track to Plug in the Auto Industry, which describes the history of the electric car, the race to produce a new generation of all-electric vehicles and now, the tipping point, where half of all new cars heading into showrooms around the world will be at least partly electric. We'll talk about the challenges still facing all-electric cars: extending their driving range, making them affordable and assuring that their batteries don't catch on fire.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Motavalli first started reporting on the dream of electric cars in the late 1980’s during the SUV boom in Detroit and when cheap gas seemed infinite. He is the author of Forward Drive and several other books. He regularly writes about clean cars for The New York Times' Automobiles section, CBS, NPR’s Car Talk and MNN.com. Jim also has a weekly syndicated Wheels column. He lives in Connecticut.

There is a lot more to eating locally than buying produce at your neighborhood farmers' market. What about all the staple foods we rely on, like grains and beans, that provide most of the calories in our diet? While Oregon's Willamette Valley has the agricultural potential to feed the valley residents twice over, nearly ninety-five percent of what we eat in the Willamette Valley is imported and what's grown here is exported. With the price of all fossil fuels on the rise, a lot of people are beginning to think that this makes no economic or agricultural sense.

On this episode of Locus Focus we are joined by Willow Coberly, co-owner of the largest grass seed farm in Linn County (touted as the grass seed capitol of the world). Her husband Harry Stalford has been a grass seed farmer all his life, but Willow is convinced that they should be growing more food on their land and using organic practices as well. Willow has been working with organic pioneer Harry MacCormack (founder of Oregon Tilth) to transistion several hundred acres of her 6,000 acre farm to growing organic wheat, grains and beans. Several years ago she helped Harry MacCormack form the the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project, a small group of farmers and local food system advocates focused on rebuilding the local food system and promoting food security in Oregon's Willamette Valley. We talk about how they are working to stimulate the cultivation and local marketing of organically grown beans and grains to provide a nutritionally dense foundation of year-round food staples in the valley.

Willow Coberly is co-owner of Stalford Seed Farms, a 6000-acre agricultural operation. She and Harry MacCormack started the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project five years ago, because most grass seed producers scoffed at the idea of growing dry-land beans or hard red wheat in the western Oregon climate. She had begun in 2003 by beginning to transition 130 acres of her farm to organic bean and grain production. Without this opportunity, the Project could not have gotten off the ground. And in the ensuing five years, Ms. Coberly has steadily transitioned more and more of her farm's acreage to organic, expanded her food crop production, added bean cleaning and grain milling capacity to her farm, and spoken regularly in public about the Bean and Grain Project and her belief that food production and a working local food system are the future of Willamette Valley agriculture.

In the past year the Northwest made major strides towards being coal-free, as deadlines were set to shut down the regions' last coal-fired power plants. But while the Northwest is moving away from relying on coal to generate its own electricity, there is a movement afoot to transform Northwest ports into a major infrastructure for shipping coal to Asia. Trainloads of coal from Wyoming would make their way across the Pacific Northwest, spewing toxic coal dust and diesel pollution, putting safety at risk, clogging the railroads, and contributing to climate change the whole way.

One of Portland's best known attributes is the easy access to all kinds of spectacular nature. Mountains, rivers, the Columbia River Gorge and the Oregon Coast are all within an easy drive from the city. One of Portland's best kept secrets is the abundance of natural areas in the metro area itself, including forests, wetlands and meadows close to downtown. Urban naturalist Mike Houck has been on a mission for years to protect and promote the city's hidden natural treasures. Over a decade ago he collaborated with M.J. Cody on a collection of natural history essays and nature rambles by foot, bike and boat, that introduced places where you can experience peak moments of nature right inside or close to the city. A completely new edition of Wild In The City: Exploring the Intertwinehas just been released. More than 100 writers and artists donated their time and expertise to this effort ranging from local naturalists to nationally renowned authors such as Richard Louv, Ursula Le Guin and Robert Michael Pyle. On this episode of Locus Focus we're joined by Mike Houck and M.J. Cody, editors of Wild in the City, along with M.J.'s brother Robin Cody, a local author who wrote one of the essays in the collection. We'll talk about how the book embodies the spirit of our regional conservation movement, and reflects the growing recognition that our natural areas, trails, ecoroofs, tree canopy, etc. are all part of an integrated system that supports the health, biodiversity and livability of our region--that nature is truly intertwined with our built landscape.

Alberta's Tar Sands operations have been stirring up controversy north of the border for some time now, Last month awareness of Alberta's tar sands mining began to spread as thousands of activists gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, that is being proposed to carry the bitumen mined in Alberta all the way to Gulf Coast ports in Texas for refinement. Now it's no longer just environmentalists who are opposing the pipeline. Latest critics include the governor of Nebraska, who is concerned that spills of highly corrusive bitumen along the way might contaminate the aquifers that provide water to the Great Plains states.

On November 6 another Tar Sands Action is being called in D.C., this time to encircle the White House and remind President Obama, one year out from next year's election day, of the power of the movement that he rode to the White House in 2008. One of the groups calling for this action is Oil Change International. On this episode of Locus Focus we are joined by Steve Kretzmann, who founded Oil Change International. Steve was one of over a thousand people arrested in Washington, D.C. this fall in the first round of protests against the Keystone XL.

Steve Kretzmann has worked on energy issues and the global oil industry for more than twenty years. He has worked with communities and organizations around the world concerned with the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the oil industry. He has campaigned to keep Florida’s coast free from oil & gas drilling, keep bike lanes open in New York City, engage reluctant corporations in dialogue about human and environmental rights, expose the oil industry’s involvement in drafting Iraq’s new oil law and, end destructive public finance by institutions such as the World Bank. He has also represented various organizations in Washington DC and at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Montreal Protocol. Steve has authored numerous articles and reports and is a regular commentator on issues of corporate accountability, climate change, the global oil industry, and environmental and human rights. He founded Oil Change International in 2005 in order to educate about the true impacts of fossil fuels and to conduct research, education, and organizing to hasten the transition to clean energy.

Comments

Barbara, I hope you might forward my comments to your guest. I was only able to listen to part of today's program but I am very interested. I want to raise my concerns about two prevailing frames that arise on your show and throughout serious discussion of climate change that I believe do great damage to the efforts to raise the awareness of the public and help them understand the urgency needed when addressing this issue.
First is the frame that global warming is happening slowly and will continue to do so. I do not believe the facts support such an assertion and not only does no one know that warming will not suddenly serge forward it seems to be doing exactly that. A report out last week raised the projected temperature for the planet by the end of the century to 9F from 4F degrees. That means that we are going to hit 4F by---2040? Until recently no one imagined the arctic ice cap could melt in anything like our lifetimes but in fact it will and it may do so as soon as 2013! The problem with the frames that give people the impression that GW is a slow process is that it provides fauls comfort, "Oh, technology will fix it before it happens," or "It is not my problem." Neither one is the case but too many people still think that way. So please start using a different frame from "by the end of the century," or “future generations." Instead say "within our life times," and stress the urgency. After all it is much more accurate to say catastrophic climate change is happening right now.

The second frame is that one cannot attribute any given weather event to global warming. That is only partly true. In fact one might say that you cannot not attribute any given weather event to climate change such is the post-industrial influence on the pre-industrial trajectory of the climate---we have departed the Holocene and are in the Antropocene some scientist tell us. It is like a basketball launched toward a basket that gets tipped by one of the players. Its trajectory is for ever changed. I think it is more accurate to say that the weather everywhere and everyday has been influence to some degree by GW. This is important because the frame that one cannot tell if an event is caused by climate change is asking them not to believe there own "eyes," experiences, or impressions which are often very astute. For instance in Oklahoma where I grew up we used to have thunderstorms in April and the 100F days did not come until late July. This year they had wild fires near Oklahoma City in April and the temperatures have been in the hundreds throughout much of this June---that has increasingly become the trend and is consistent with climate change projections. Now Oklahomans should by all rights believe that what they are experiencing is in fact global warming. It may be noted that Inhofe is a Senator from Oklahoma and one of the most radical global warming deniers and obstructionist in government.
I have been keeping up with this issue for a long time now and am alarmed at the rapidity that things are taking place. I truly believe we are probably in for crop failures, water shortages, and mass migrations here in North America, in this country, within our lifetimes and whereas I think there is a fine line to be drawn to not panic or send people into despair I think scientist tend to be much too measured in their statements. It is as though there is smoke billowing out of the projection room and the scientists don’t want be caught dead yelling fire in a crowded theater because there is no "proof" that there is in fact a fire.
Scientist have long dismissed the near term risk of a methane/co2 release from the arctic or the ocean meanwhile there is growing indications that that is exactly what is happening. As a NASA scientist you should know that a huge methane release was detected on Mars a few years ago and that is within a much more static system than ours----that should give us pause!
The public needs to be prepared in case there is a sudden spike in methane from the Arctic so I hope in the future Barbara you will direct your discussions of climate change toward the rapidity of changes already taking place and the potential danger of being too complacent and smug about what we know and what we think we do or do not know. Thank you.

I recently interviewed Phil Mote who has replaced climate change denier George Taylor as Oregon's State Climatologist. Like any careful scientist Mote does not feel comfortable attributing specific weather events to climate change. But he gave me a analogy that I like: It's like playing Russian Roulette and adding a second bullet to the chamber of the revolver. If you blow your head off it doesn't really matter whether it was the original bullet or added bullet that did you in.

While I support solar energy, I warn against pie-in-the-sky proposals that make it sound like we can find new sources to keep living our wasteful lives. The scale of the problem is lost when we pretend that putting solar panels on 100 roofs signifies real change.

There is some hope to be found in using solar power efficiently. This does NOT include powering electric resistance heaters with photovoltaics. It does mean passive solar heating, solar hot water, and solar clothes driers (AKA clotheslines).

When you have used conservation and innovation to convert the wasteful electric grid into a sustainable system, then we can begin the conversation about supplimenting the system for our transportation problems. Until then, the only real sustainable alternatives to petroleum are wind, human, and animal powered vehicles. Coal and nuclear, the primary sources of new electricity, are polluting uses of nonrenewable resources.

Walk, ride a bicycle, sail (without motor), and use horse and ox cart, if you are truly concerned about the serious threat of climate change. Park your car forever. We cannot afford cars any longer.

i think now is a good time to talk more about what socialism actually is - common ownership of the means of production - and what is is not - redistributing wealth. you are right to continue pointing out that what obama is talking about is a progressive tax structure, not socialism.

the progressive tax idea actually comes from adam smith himself, "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." [from book 5, ch.2 on taxes]

The intro music to Locus Focus is a song by Hugh Masakela called "Change." It's on his album "Time," which came out a few years ago. I plan on playing the song each week until Robert Mugabe relinquishes power in Zimbabwe.

Did you see the piece in the NY Times re schizophrenia and autism having possible roots in parental dna - that is mother mix:father's mix? That is female characteristics manifesting as schizophrenia from mother dna and autistic characteristics from father's?